Generally, a wire harness is an electric wiring system composed of a plurality of insulative sheathed wires bundled together.
The manufacturing process of the wire harness includes a terminal inserting step for inserting a so-called wire with crimped terminals caulked at both ends thereof (hereinafter referred to as a "wire with terminals") into a connector housing.
The terminal inserting step is conducted by receiving a wire with terminals manufactured in the above step by means of a drive apparatus which includes a terminal inserting mechanism for inserting the terminals into terminal cavities of a connector housing which has been previously arranged and carried in the predetermined direction.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 63-174224 discloses such terminal inserting drive apparatus. The terminal inserting drive apparatus is arranged along a parallel direction of the connector housing, and is provided with a pair of hand sections for gripping the vicinity of both ends of the wire with terminals, a conveying section for conveying the hand section being gripping the wire with terminals to a terminal inserting portion, and a driving section for driving the conveyed hand section in the terminal inserting direction.
Here, the distance in the parallel direction between the terminal cavities corresponding with both terminals fixed to one wire (hereinafter referred to as "juxtapositional distance") does not always correspond to the opposing distance between both hand sections. Therefore, terminals gripped by one hand section and the other hand section cannot be inserted simultaneously. Thus, the prior art employs a method of sequentially inserting both terminals gripped by the respective hand sections into the terminal cavities one by one.
The construction of the respective hand sections is as described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 32-83285.
In order to enhance the efficiency of the terminal inserting step as described above, it is necessary that both hand sections conduct terminal inserting operations simultaneously to the utmost.
However, in the terminal inserting drive apparatus according to the prior art, when the juxtapositional distance of the terminal cavities is different from the opposing distance of the hand sections, both terminals were inserted sequentially one by one, so that the production efficiency was low.
Also, since the respective hand sections in the prior art were integrally conveyed by the conveying section, it became difficult to position when receiving the portion adjacent to the end of the wire with terminals manufactured in the previous step, thereby causing an error in gripping. Such an error in gripping was noticeably arisen in particular when the dimension of the terminals and wire varies much depending on the kind of the wire with the terminal used for one of subassemblies.
Accordingly, what is really needed is a terminal inserting drive apparatus which can be efficiently operated even if the juxtapositional distance of the terminal cavities is different from the opposing distance of the hand sections and can firmly grip the wire with terminals manufactured by the previous step in the desired state when inserting the terminals into the terminal cavities of the connector housing.